A letter to Ellen a childhood friend

To My Dear Old Friend, Ellen,

It seems impossible that fifty six years have passed since I watched you waving good-bye while looking wistfully through the window of your family’s Ford station wagon. We shared a pain deep in our chests. Truth be told, I shed a few tears when no one was looking. I said a little prayer for you because I knew you were embarking on a new life in a new place. I can still feel the huge empty place your leaving left inside my chest.

I am amazed, that even after so much time has passed; the miracles of modern communication have made it possible to make contact again. It is far more than I ever allowed myself to wish.

Time has been both kind and unkind to us both. I guess that is life. We have lost the youthful sheen of innocence which made us so special to each other. I guess after more than a half century we should look a little different than we did so long ago at the spring dance. I remember your ethereal crown of blond hair in the moonlight. You were so beautiful you took my breath away. That short night we spent talking about finding each other later. Little did we know where our paths would take us.

I was so sorry to hear about you having Cancer. I beat it once, and the possibility exists for you to beat it too. I will pray each morning and each night for you.

Is there anything I can tell you? Can I do anything to make it easier for you to hold your own against the ravages of time? It is a continuing fight against the insanity of the world around us; won only by placing the next foot forward; and refusing to give up on our journey. Everyone needs the encouragement of friends to push on one more step. When I can I’ll hop a bus and spend an afternoon with you, until then we will have to settle for letters.

I can see us playing checkers under the giant towering Spruce in the park. How many years more than my lifetime, times three, does it take to grow such magnificent trees? I think they are there because sometimes old people need a bit of shade and a safe place to share their tales. It helps me to see an example of a living thing so many times older than I. Up close or distant my eyes are impressed. It encourages an old mind like mine to keep things in perspective and simply focus upon what is really important.

My prayer places are limited now; by ambulatory weakness, and by things completely out of my control. One is geographical. I make do sitting on my deck with my first cup of coffee enjoying the sounds of morning awakening all around me. The first fingers of sunrise stretch out to caress the land and add dancing diamonds to the surface of the river. I thank him for the sight and the sounds of the birds. It adds to the symphony of life growing in my soul, which I will gladly share with you.

I live just across the river from Cincinnasty Ohio. All their light keeps most of the stars much too dim to see with the naked eye. It is a wedge between earth and our ability to see forever into the vast deep indigo that is above. A cloud of haze collects and scatters the light. Much comes from lighting the streets and lighting of security lights. I wonder are we really any safer? How much power would we save if everyone were someone who could really be trusted? Long ago no one in town locked their doors.

I wonder as I travel in a bus; here I am in one small spark on a ribbon of light called a highway. Is there really a reason why I have to be so far away in just a few hours? How much light do I add to the "Light Pollution" that keeps us so distant from the stars?

How many kilowatts does it take to smudge the view through my soul’s window to forever?

I remember as just a child, looking at the vast expanse of the Milky Way blazing an amazing trail to the distant universe. As a youngster of nine years old, I got up at 3:30 in the Morning, meeting the train along with my older brother and four more paperboys; and one papergirl named Ellen.

You were one year older than I, but we were in the same class in school. You were sixteen almost seventeen and I was a few days over sixteen when your family moved away. It left an empty place that has never really found something to refill it.

I think sometimes, what we had as children, was so much more splendid than that for which we settled, and called love as we grew older. I hope your life has been sweeter to you than mine has to me.

I remember when the train was late we held hands, tipped our heads back, and drank in the spectacular view; until we would almost founder our brains with the sight of the heavens. Your brother Joe and my brother Rusty tried to tease us about sitting, stargazing, and holding hands. Strange it never really bothered me because we weren't just kissy-faced, love-smitten, teenagers. We had so much more you see; Ellen you were my best friend. At times I remember the simple pleasure of feeling the pulse in our hands joined in synchronicity. Never since have I experienced such power. It was plain enough to grasp, even then; we need our friends and they need us. It all comes so clearly into focus at four in the morning.

Our universe is exposed for what it is, a giant wheel. Amazing that even though the part I could see was so minute, I knew how much larger it is than all the schemes and plots of man trapped on this speck-of-dust planet. We consider ourselves giants against the backdrop of our little corner of this tiny earth. It all vanishes into insignificance when we confront the vastness of space. Perhaps it's just a flicker in my imagination or all in my mind, or a memory of waiting for the train at four in the morning, knowing without doubt, that I have a real friend.

My father woke me up many times when I was small. He would encourage me with promises of the spectacular thing, which is happening right now! I begrudgingly dragged my sleepy-self outside to watch a full moon slowly eaten by a shadow. It disappeared except for a dim violet ring that marked the previous limits of the full moon. I watched it slowly reappear with a sky full of ducks and Geese. I had not noticed any fowl of any kind at first. It was as if they used the cover of darkness to catch a few much needed moments of rest on their way south. Dad never failed to show me something spectacular. "Look carefully my son, you will never see this again." Neither of us minded the fact that our breath was turned to frost by the bubble of super cooled air between us and the gateway to forever. How can one forget such a significant event? Not in my lifetime or as long I can write. My only hope for any immortality is for someone to remember something that I wrote. I silently hope that night could come again, I know better really. So I am forced to write about it to bring it life by remembering.

It makes a huge difference to me; how many people are going to read what I write? Each reader is but one chance for me to live a little longer. But you and I both know so well, that very few will even have an idea of what lies written before them. It is so sad to me, because so many are unable to even read a book, Much less understand it. Some are mesmerized by TV and are magnetically drawn to a comfortable dent in the couch. How many hours does it take to make a comfortable spot, which you can sink into and hide behind what's on the screen?

I think there are some of both extremes in everyone. It is the choices that we make that bend our path. So many of us are earth bound, we have lost the ability to see forever right above our heads; it is lost in a well-lighted cloud and now is hidden from one who has forgotten how to look up and dream. Or perhaps some never really learned. Everyone did not grow up living 9000 feet high in one of the driest places in the United States. Perhaps because we grew up closer to the stars, our lives were different?

It is not a well-traveled road I travel, because I make it all up as I go along, one step at a time. What is this place in which I find myself? Perhaps its name is now.

How do I measure up in this small moment in time? My past is tumbling like meteoric rocks through time and space; about to vanish into a black hole at the center, of the center. The future is now, plus one tiny moment in time mathematically it is only in that tiny transition from one moment to next that everything exists. The Ancient Greeks used the letter DELTA, to describe that change.

I write this knowing that you are still my friend and perhaps together we can do something that neither of us could do alone. There is time enough, if we do not surrender to the ravages of time. Its lessons have given us just what we need for now.

I look forward to a visit, and the pleasure of holding your hand one more time. I hope we can see the stars from where you are. If not we will have to trust our memories. I remember so much. The smell of your corsage, how you are the only person with whom I danced and wound up in another world.


Always Yours,
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